“Sì.You did not go after it. You came after me.”
“Oh.” She laughed. “Is that how it works?”
I took her hand, kissing her knuckles, breathing her in. “I make the rules for this situation.”
“Yes,myking.” She bowed and made some type of rolling motion with her free hand at me.
My cock instantly hardened, and I had to control the impulse to pull the car over and make love to her. Her face, the pure ecstasy on it, how wet and sweet herficawould be for me…I could already smell her in the air, taste her desire on my tongue, her nails clawing to go deeper than skin, her soft breasts bouncing, her raspberry-colored nipples hardening at a whispered breath…
“Rocco?” she whispered.
I looked at her.
She blinked at me.
I seemed to be blinking back.
“I would give you every one of my scarves and bows...” she touched her hair, though she did not wear either in it “…as a romantic gesture. Knights would collect them from their ladies before battles and competitions.”
“Sì.This was a time when romance was not an endangered animal.”
“So romantic,” she breathed out, staring at me. “And so true.”
Her time alone on the island came back to me with a vengeance. I squeezed her hand and pulled it to my heart. My voice was as serious as it was rough. “On this island, you walked alone. Without even knowing I was behind you. This made my heart uneasy—testy. No more shall you walk alone,luce dei miei cuore.”
“No more shall I walk alone,” she repeated, whispering after in the softest voice I had ever heard, “light of my heart.”
She ran her fingers over the delicate fabric of the scarf, waving in the wind just as it had done all those years ago. Her eyes narrowed.
“Wait,” she breathed. “This isn’t mine. I mean, I have one that’s so similar, that’s why I thought it was, but…it’s not.” She crossed her arms over her chest, giving me a narrow look again.
I wanted to laugh, but I thought it best if I did not. I sighed instead and told her a story, a story of a much younger man who climbed the witch’s tower on the eve of the day he had to decide on who to marry, since his father had ordered him to, and how a delicate piece of fabric, with a woman’s scent and hair on it, caused him to go back for it and bring it home. How the man kept it close all those years, and how the woman who was created from his rib,his, had finally made her way to him to retrieve it.
“How…” She shook her head. “How is this possible?”
I shrugged. “I do not care how. I only care that it is.”
She leaned her head against my shoulder, touching the scarf again, almost reverently, and then sighed.
Her mood turned as quickly as an island storm, dark, as we slowed in front of what she referred to, and plenty of the island’s inhabitants as well, as the “haunted”castello. Another of my men had been hospitalized for the idea that he had been possessed by the spirit who inhabited thecastello.My father ordered only the strong of spirit to enter. This left Mac, Vincenzo, Saverio, two soldiers, and the two caretakers, who were still perplexed by the “new” ghost, who neither believed was a ghost at all.
In total, we had an army of five, who Romeo called “the ghostbusters.”
My father had cursed, growled, and said it was a good thing we were not at war with the afterlife. Our soldiers loitered outside of thecastelloat all entrance and exit points.
I slowed in front of thecastello, and Mac nodded to me. He checked his watch, then said something to one of the men.
“What?” Amora asked, crossing her arms, narrowing her eyes at me again. “What’s going on?”
Amora was not obtuse, and neither was I. She had caught the acknowledging look Mac had sent to me—a look reinforcing that the situation was not settling. Another macabre love letter in blood had been left.
Remember my voice.
She dies.
Whoever had done it had painted the warning on another wall further in the secret area of thecastello. Blood ran from the message and dripped onto the floor. It was the blood of an animal. Mac had it tested. Vincenzo, who seemed to have set his hopes on a real ghost, spoke to theasinodoctor, who the island trusted. He tended to the needs of all the flocks. None of the animals had gone missing, but it was animal blood. From pork.
My hands squeezed the wheel, the veins underneath my skin feeling as if they may pop. If this was the ghost of Rosaria, this was something she would have done in life. To be symbolic, she would have used the blood of a pig, as if Amora was one and would understand the note written in its blood.
